Word: rabbis
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...Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the New Year-by Jewish reckoning the 5,732nd since the creation of the world-and the congregation had been crowding into Manhattan's new Lincoln Square Synagogue since shortly after sunrise. Now Rabbi Steven Riskin and the cantor huddled together. "Tekiah," intoned the rabbi softly, using the Hebrew command for a long blast on the shofar. The cantor tensed his cheeks and raised the ram's horn to sound the melancholy note, the first of a hundred blasts that began the High Holy Days...
...Rabbi Riskin is something of a shofar himself, calling nonreligious Manhattan Jews to God-and to Orthodoxy-in surprising numbers. Even on ordinary Sabbaths his new synagogue in the round is filled, and more than half the worshipers are young adults under 30. But Riskin has prepared middle-aged men as well as teenagers for Bar Mitzvah, and last Yom Kippur gave an 80-year-old man his first prayer shawl...
...Rabbi Riskin is a charismatic speaker, flexing his voice like a Bible Belt preacher, punctuating his ideas with his hands. He is also a widely respected Talmudic scholar who stresses that the most important function of the synagogue is to be a Bet Midrash-a "house of study." More than 250 people regularly jam his weekly class on Jewish Law and its application to such modern problems as contraception, prison reform and war. But concern, not relevance, is probably the ultimate key to Riskin's appeal. "The ministry must create a community of people whom the rabbi cares about...
Life and Law. Steven Riskin came from a family of Brooklyn Jews who went to synagogue only three times a year. Young Steven wanted more, and entered Manhattan's Orthodox Yeshiva University High School. There he first came under the influence of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchek, a preeminent U.S. Orthodox authority and Kantian scholar who emphasizes Orthodoxy's basic compatibility with secular learning. Riskin went on to become valedictorian at Yeshiva University. Then, journeying to Israel to attend Hebrew University, he sought out Martin Buber, whose works he had been reading since he was twelve. Riskin found that...
...league-founded in 1968 by Rabbi Meir Kahane-has taken on neo-Nazis, allegedly anti-Semitic blacks and the Soviet persecution of Jews. It is most notorious for its harassment of Soviet diplomats in the U.S. (TIME, May 24). Kahane is currently out on five-year probation after pleading guilty to charges of conspiring to manufacture explosives. The camp is part of the league's program-originated in the poorer Jewish neighborhoods of New York City -to teach Jewish youths the fundamentals of self-defense at a time when threats to life and property seem to be ominously mounting...